New documents reveal cover-up of 1948 British 'massacre' of villagers in Malaya

[alp227]

Source: The Guardian

The Foreign Office intervened to stop a criminal investigation into the alleged massacre of 24 unarmed villagers by British troops, in a cover-up that puts Britain's colonial past under renewed scrutiny. Newly disclosed documents reveal that in the 1990s UK officials pressured Malaysian authorities into aborting a police inquiry into the alleged killings by Scots Guards in Malaya in 1948.

They reveal that Malaysian police officers contacted Interpol and were due to visit the UK in 1993 to interview soldiers involved in the shootings, only for the Foreign Office to pressure the country's high commissioner into halting the visit. One memorandum states that senior Foreign Office officials later met Malaysian police chiefs to discuss closing the inquiry shortly before it was aborted.

The documents, released by Malaysian sources ahead of a judicial review related to the massacre, also reveal how a Metropolitan police investigation in 1970 into the allegations was "terminated" because an incoming Conservative government did not want the darker aspects of Britain's colonial past exposed.

The plantation workers were shot in cold blood by a 16-man patrol of Scots Guards in December 1948. Many of the victims' bodies were found to have been mutilated and their village of Batang Kali was burned to the ground. No weapons were found when the village was searched during a military operation against Chinese communists in the post-second world war Malayan emergency.

Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/apr/09/malaya-massacre-villagers-coverup

[indepat]

1. Seems neither crimes against humanity, war crimes, nor acts of terrorism apply if committed by

Anglo victors or colonialists? :shrug: :patriot:

[TheMadMonk]

2. The victor gets to write the history books.

"Creative" and pointless ways of killing are par for the course in war, moreso when ideologies clash head on.

Baby meet rock. Nailed to a door, with entrails "gently" spilled on the ground - extra points for pregnant women. Blinded and left amongst the dismembered family was always good for a reminiscent chuckle around the fire. Start with any animals that are nearby to let the family know what's coming.

Is truly it any worse for ignorant soldiers to make private sport with a peasant family than to make a grisly public example of a conquered ruling family down to the head of the last suckling babe on a spike over the gate?